Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The Secret to Shelia’s “Chicken and Red Sauce”

A friend of our son wants to make a him Ghanaian comfort food for his birthday. Sheila’s Chicken and Red Sauce is the gold standard. Prepared in the afternoon, the chicken is served room temperature with piping hot Red Sauce, white rice and a fruit salad.

In 2009, Shelia taught me it’s secrets.

[Steve & Shelia cooking in 2009]

There are two recipes that are cooked concurrently, often in the early afternoon before the house got hot.

Fried Chicken

8 medium onions, quartered

2 fists of garlic, skinned and cut

4 fingers of ginger, skinned and cut into slices

3 small chickens, cut up.

2t salt

Oil for frying (safflower or sunflower)

Method:

Chop onions, garlic and ginger in a food processor or blender until rough-smooth. Pour over cut up chicken and cook on medium-high heat for 10 minutes.

[“steaming” the chicken]

Add salt, stir and continue to cook until chicken thoroughly cooked and just starts to pull away from the bone. Shelia calls this “steaming the chicken.”

While chicken is “steaming” start work on the Red Sauce (see next recipe).

When chicken begins to pull away from the bone, steaming as long as 30 minutes (depending on the tenderness of the chicken) turn fire off and remove chicken with tongs and place in a colander, capturing the stock that drains off and returning it to the stock pot. Let chicken cool slightly.

[frying the steamed chicken]

In a large, deep frying pan add one half to three quarters inch of light oil. Heat oil until hot, then carefully add chicken to one layer. Cook until chicken is deep brown on all sides and remove. Drain on paper towel, and cover. Cook chicken in batches.

Red Sauce

[peppers and tomatoes]

32 Roma Tomatoes, quartered (or 3 large tins of diced tomatoes)

1 handful of small hot habanero peppers, steamed and seeded (if you want to reduce the heat).

When reduced by half, add 2 tins of tomato paste, and blend until smooth, cooking on medium heat.

Add 4 cups of stock from the chicken, (which should replace half of the liquid that was reduced by cooking).

[chicken stock added]

Cook until thick. Add in 3 T curry powder and turn off fire and correct seasoning, adding salt if needed.

Tip: Do not cook curry powder as it loses its flavor and becomes bitter.

Just before serving, stir in cubed green peppers.

Serve with rice and fruit salad.

Thoughts on Cooking

I wonder why it is I am drawn to doing the things that only last for the moment, like

performing music

preaching

cooking

things that are fully consuming, but once completed, become memories.

I look at the artwork my kids have made over the years, and they are for us, a moment in time, captured. But for most of what I really I enjoy doing, there are only memories.

Like my mom teaching me to make what I now call "Iowa Chili," though it should more rightly be called "Kansas Chili" because that is where she was raised, but I learned it in Iowa. Iowa Chili doesn't have garlic, it does have kidney beans, along with ground beef, and uses tomato sauce along with the whole tomatoes.

Texas Chili is way different, as is Grubstake Chili. Each has been taught to me in a kitchen of shared love, love of food, love of the cooking process, love of the companionship of learning and teaching food, and the stories.

At my first church, the kitchen was where everything important happened. We cooked together, talked, enjoyed each other's friendship in that room. If I needed to think or talk to someone, staff knew it would happen in the kitchen.

At my last church, I taught a cooking class that prepared food for 100 in a couple of hours from raw ingredients. It really was an excuse for us to gather in the kitchen and enjoy each other for a few hours. It was an amazing kitchen.

Not every church has a kitchen like that. In one church I served the kitchen was a room designed by someone who doesn't like to cook. It lacked a soul, odd for a building that has such vibrancy in its design and construction.

I know rooms are not alive, that they don't have a soul, but there is something about this kitchen that is missing. It may be what my daughter Anna talks about, when she says "chain food" doesn't have love in it. She can taste if the love is there, she says, and knows if the person who made it cared.

Food is symbolic of Love when words are inadequate. – Alan D. Wolfelt

Eating dinner that night Shelia taught me her Chicken and Red Sauce, around the Mozley's large table, eating this wonderful food, with these great friends, I remember thinking, if my Anna was here, she would taste the love, and the friendship that produced and shared this meal. It made me think that food is not just to something to sustain our bodies, but when shared, to sustain our souls.